One of my worst character traits, and one that I manage to keep mostly under control, is a short temper that flares up at frustrations that are always ridiculous in hindsight. Fortunately I have learned to recognize the signs, and can usually get myself out of the situation that is making me see red BEFORE I wind up needing to apologize to people for being a jerk.

I bring this up because one of my more memorable and humiliating temper tantrums revolved around the last boss of Ys Book II, back in the glory days of the TurboDuo, who was a right bastard of a boss and made even worse by an unskippable and infuriating cutscene that played before every attempt.

I was NOT good at recognizing how angry this was making me at the time, and it was the closest I’ve ever come to breaking a controller in rage. I had barely enough self control to restrain myself to just turning off the console and walking away, never to put the disc back in the system again.

So, it’s been a sore spot for a couple of decades now. Not just because I’d gotten to the final fight of a long RPG and been stymied, but because there was so much personal embarrassment around how it had gotten under my skin.

Anyway, short version, I have recently found myself wanting to go back to the Ys games, give the first two-parter a new chance, and see if I’d be able to get through the things without losing my cool. Playing through all of the Souls games last year with no thrown controllers gave me some hope in this regard, and XSeed publishing the PC ports of the series on Steam gave me the opportunity (the TurboDuo is long since gone to a Canadian gentleman on eBay.)

I am not ashamed to admit that I set the difficulty level for both games to Easy, nor am I ashamed to resorting to a walkthrough to get through the maze-like Shrine of Solomon in the second game. I’m pretty sure it was designed to sell hint books back in the day, and I already made it through the maze without said hint books once…

…and I am glad to report that the rematch went much more in my favor this time around AND that I don’t have any new embarrassing outbursts to confess.